'It's Just Made-Up Drama' - Lucas Glover Criticizes 'Contrived' Tour Championship Format

Lucas Glover has described the Tour Championship format as “contrived” and doesn’t think the system translates well to golf.

The six-time PGA Tour winner gave his opinion on the culmination of the FedEx Cup Playoffs on his SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio show. On it, he argued that if a player has a big enough FedEx Cup Points advantage heading into the event, he deserves to win the season-long competition.

He said: “Let’s just play golf. If you’ve got a big lead you’ve got a big lead, you deserve to win, you know? Before the FedEx Cup started in 2007, if you made it to the Tour Championship, you’d had a heck of a year all year and the reward was getting there. And the money list, or the Vardon Trophy, or whatever it may have been, well, that’s your end-of-the-year award.”

Since 2019, even if a player has a huge FedEx Cup points advantage over the rest of the 30-player field, there is no guarantee he will claim the trophy. That’s because nowadays, the player leading the points list at the start of the Tour Championship is given only a two-shot advantage over the player next on the list.

So, in 2024, FedEx Cup points leader Scottie Scheffler began on 10-under, just two ahead of Xander Schauffele, even though he had considerably more points than his closest rival. Meanwhile, even the players ranked 26^th to 30^th in the field had a chance of winning the FedEx Cup as they began the 72 holes of strokeplay just 10 shots off the leader.

Ahead of last year’s event, Scheffler, who won the FedEx Cup, criticized the format, calling it out as “silly” and arguing that it goes against the concept of a season-long race. He said: “Hypothetically, we get to East Lake and my neck flares up and it doesn't heal the way it did at The Players, I finish 30th in the FedEx Cup because I had to withdraw from the last tournament? Is that really the season-long race? No.”

Glover agrees, and he went further, describing the current format as “made-up drama.” He added: “Well, it’s so contrived now, sorry to keep using that term, but it is. It’s made-up drama, and we tried to model this after racing and it just doesn’t work. It’s golf, you know? You can’t have playoffs in golf because nobody gets knocked out.”

There has been speculation in recent months that changes could be coming. In January, The Athletic reported that the Tour Championship format could change, with a match play/bracket-style format among the possibilities being considered.

Last week, PGA Tour player director Adam Scott gave an update on a potential format change for this year's Tour Championship. He told Golfweek's Adam Schupak: “I feel more confident after we had a PAC meeting [last] week. There’s a direction, but of course, the Tour needs to speak to everybody involved – TV, sponsors, venue – and make sure they have a level of comfort like the players."